The usual suspects make their clever and unhelpful interventions, broadly agreeing that there may be a more true blue heart beating beneath the carefully presented image of moderation.

“I don’t believe for a minute he believes protecting the N.H.S. is a good idea,” says Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator, the Tory-leaning weekly, with some mixture of disdain and admiration.

The writer Michael Wolff suggests Cameron was "role playing" Brideshead at Oxford with all of that Bullingdon gear.

Cameron's Shadow Cabinet colleague Ed Vaizey suggests his close friend is role playing "progressive Conservatism" in the run-up to election 2010.

“He is, I believe, much more conservative by nature than he acts, or than he is forced to be by political exigency,” says Tory M.P. and Oxford friend Ed Vaizey.

(It may be Fraser Nelson's job to be provocative; but it isn't Ed Vaizey's, as Peter Hoskin points out at the Coffee House).

And Boris Johnson offers several sardonically mocking comments on Cameron, his gift for alchemy and creating the impression of a "more or less glutinous consensus"

“The lion lies down with a lamb, calf, and fatling together, and a little child shall lead them,” says Johnson dryly.

Wolff is the latest author to suggest that unravelling the enigma is a quixotic task, noting Cameron's talent for meta-spin.

It’s through her [Samantha's] family that he exits politics in 1994, at the age of 28, and goes to work as a P.R. man for Carl­ton, the television company. This is, it should be noted, not just the P.R. business, but the P.R. business to the media business, which is yet another layer on top of another layer of artifice.

***

Update:

Michael Wolff has tweeted about "thin-skinned" senior Tories calling to complain about the piece. It is difficult to see what purpose that could serve after the event.

Another call from UK. The Tory skin is too thin and they should stop picking on @edvaizey

CAMERON: Tory leaders are agitated about my piece. They shouldn't be. It is, in my way, an appreciation.